Some thoughts ...
On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
Daniel Sabo sorry@nospam.com wrote:
Neither the BSD or GPL is free, only public domain is free.
The problem with PD software is this screwed up litigious era we live in the US.
Agreed! Thankfully things aren't as bad here in the UK (so far ...)
Which on you use doesn't depend on freedom, it depends on your goal.
true. though the point I was making was BSD *IS* freer than GPL.
You can't (correctly) say that. A more correct statement is "I consider BSD to be freer than GPL", but you can't assert that truth for everyone. There is a fundamental dichotomy between BSD and GPL in what they consider axiomatic: View #1: BSD - here's the source code, do what you want LGPL - here's the source code, do what you want but only if you make the source code available. (which if freer?)
View #2: BSD - Joe Developer can use any copy of the source code, except those juicy bits in propitiatory products. LGPL - Joe Developer can use any copy of the source code. (which is freer?)
You could say: pah! view #1 is rubbish because of X and you might be right; alternatively you could say view #2 is nonsense because of Y and again you could be right. Either way, these are _your_ opinions, they are not universal truths.
So can we quit with the "this license is freer that" statements. Its immaterial as what we're after is the best license for the continued development of wine.
"J.Brown (Ender/Amigo)" ender@enderboi.com wrote:
a) LGPL will stop commercial development
Hinder, and this is NOT debatable. [snip]
Agreed.
Although I'm not convinced that hindering _some_ commercial development necessarily translates into a hindrance of wine. If fact the reverse could turn out to be true.
No, but you may not be able to accept the terms of the [LGPL] license (for legal reasons). Read the paragraph of section 6.
I'm not sure I follow you, could you be more specific? (which paragraph of section 6 and in what way is it not acceptable for legal reasons)
However, if ALL of wine is LGPLed, it is not debatable that no propriatary additions can be made, as the spec compiler will prevent that from happening.
gcc is GPLed (rather than LGPLed). Although it's not stated explicitly anywhere, there is at least one acknowledgement on their web page that you can compile proprietary code with gcc.
How does the spec compiler differ functionally from gcc?
Thus RMS complains it isn't real "open-source"... Neither the LGPL or GPL prevents charging for software,
Whoa! Having met the guy I can tell you RMS would never describe GPL or LGPL as "open source". Whether you make the distinction between "Free" and "Open Source", he certainly does.
I'm also surprised that he would have said that (if you substitute "free" for "open-source"). AFAIK, FSF is trying to put together a complete free (as defined on their webpages) OS. I'd imagine whether or not money is charged is irrelevant, from his point of view. Do you have a reference for that statement?
??? Read 2C of LGPL. You can charge for the disk, but you CANNOT charge for the software.
Forgive the gratuitous cut and paste (from LGPL v2):
- You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of
it, thus forming a work based on the Library [ ... ] provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
[snip!]
- c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
ANAL, but within the context of the whole section I take "the whole of the work" (of section 2.c) to refer to the library plus any modifications to the library you make to it. So under the license, if you create SuperWine (wine + bug fixes) you must release the source for all of SuperWine, not just the original wine sourcecode. IMHO it is badly worded as "the work" has more than one meaning within the license as a whole.
Cheers,
Paul.